Bündnerfleisch - The Cured Beef Recipe You Didn't Know You Needed!

We are doing another wonderful meat curing project. Today we are turning this beef eye of round into a Swiss delicacy called buntnerfleisch. You can hear the official pronunciation, I just tried to listen to it. But not fleisch, buntnerfleisch. This is a PGI food, it's a protected geographical food, so this is not technically. At all. Wunderfleisch. It is inspired by, but it is not the Swiss delicacy because we're making it at home. And this is not the same thing. It is just heavily, heavily inspired by. It's very simple. We only need a few ingredients, some home cookware. Let's make it. So this cure, we're going to be doing 3% of the weight of the meat in salt, 3% sugar, and then Spices, we've got, let's see, our total weight of our meat was 1,374 grams. So we have 42 grams of salt, 42 grams of sugar. We've got two teaspoons of black pepper, one teaspoon of coriander, half a teaspoon of cloves, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, one teaspoon of crushed juniper. berries. So that's the whole cure mix we have here. We are going to use the entire mix on this. So first things first, we're just going to trim this up a little bit, get some of this extra fat and, uh, send you off and then we'll be off to the races. All right, now we're just going to get this all layered into our container. Any kind of home Tupperware glass container that's going to fit it is going to work just fine. We're going to put a layer of this on the bottom. We're gonna put the rest in on top and we just wanna make sure it's kind of covered all over pretty well. And we're gonna go ahead and be turning this periodically as it cures. So no worries too much cause you're gonna be rotating it and checking on it. But you do wanna make sure that you get a good start to getting every end covered right off the bat. My word, this smells so good. So good. I actually ate this when I was in Switzerland. It was one of the cured meats that made me just fall in love with the whole world of home charcuterie. And it took me forever to figure out what it was when I got home, because Bunter Fleisch is a weird word for me. And I couldn't remember for the life of me what it was called, but I finally figured it out after much looking around. And I'm so excited to be making it at home. So all that we're going to do is pop top on. This could also be done in a vacuum seal bag, in a Ziploc bag, whatever you have, make it work for you. This is going to go in the fridge for probably a minimum of three days up to five or 10 days. It's pretty flexible. The general rule of thumb is like minimum one day per two pounds of meat. But usually I like a little bit longer than that. So we're going to pop this in our cold spot. That can be the fridge. That can be outside. It can be your cold room, your cellar, your pantry, your basement, somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And then we'll be back in a while. Welcome back. It is day five on our Bunter Fleisch cure. It has created this beautiful self brine and I've been flipping it over every day or two Two, as I think about it, to let it. Really kind of be evenly distributed in this brine that it has made for itself. It has changed quite a bit. You can see from when it was raw, the color has darkened. We've got a little bit more of that like purpley brown color. And if you poke it, it has firmed up quite a bit. It's definitely not as firm as it'll be when it's done drying, but it's not feeling like raw meat anymore. It has firmed. Quite a bit, and it smells incredible still, so that's wonderful. Now, what we're gonna do is just take this out, rinse it off, get it patted dry, squeeze out as much moisture as we can, roll it up and get it hung to start doing its curing and aging process. Look at all that liquid it made. Alrighty. Now you can do this with disposable kitchen towels if you'd like. I like to use just cheesecloth or an old tea towel, something that you're not really picky about getting stained. And we're just going to pat this dry as best we can because we don't actually want to introduce new moisture. We just wanted to get all of those big chunks of seasoning off because if we leave that on, it can Contribute to undesirable molds and we do want to encourage some types of molds are really wonderful. The white kind of powdery penicillium molds, those are lovely. Those actually enhance the flavor and the texture and they protect the surface from drying out too much. Those are wonderful if you can cultivate them. I have a hard time cultivating them because I have really low humidity here. I have to work very hard to get my humidity up. But yeah, long cat hair, really vibrant colors. We usually want to discourage that kind of mold. And so just getting off, like I missed a juniper berry here. Any of those big juniper berry pieces, that's mostly what we're just wanting to get those really big chunks off. But that looks wonderful at this stage. You kind of have options. One of the options is traditionally you can press it. So we could put something really heavy on top, a cutting board with some weights, or like I've seen people do a brick wrapped in tin foil or saran wrap. You could press it like this and you'd get that classic rectangular shape and put it in your cold spot to do its aging while being pressed for a Or you can tie it up and hang it and that's actually what I'm going to do today is I'm going to tie it and so we'll be squeezing it in a round shape though kind of similar to how you would do maybe like a cured pork loin. That's what I'm going to do today. And speaking of my low humidity, I'm actually going to wrap it in another cheesecloth just to help with a little bit of that initial moisture loss because I know my humidity is a little bit low right now, but you can do this without the additional cheesecloth if you have adequate humidity. All I'm going to do is roll this as tightly as I can. Give myself a good start here, Getting it nice and tight. And then just some twine, whatever kind of, you know, kitchen twine you have on hand. I'm not real good at the fancy butcher's knots. You don't have to be. You can do that if you are good at it, but certainly any type of knot will work. Now this top end, I'm going to tie kind of like I do with the salami. I'm going to flip this cloth over and then that is just going to help. On the off chance that it were to slip this will just prevent it from slipping out and falling down and then we've got a nice little loop to hang it from and I'll just tie up the bottom here. This really is not necessary if you have good humidity. I just know that my hanging room has low humidity right now and this extra little layer of protection is going to keep my meat from drying out on the surface too fast right away. But this can also encourage molds. So it just really depends on your conditions. I encourage you if you're starting out to try multiple things, see what works well for you in your locations, and you'll kind of get a knack for it eventually. But that's it for now. We're going to go hang this in our curing spot, which if you are just starting out and you're unfamiliar with what those conditions should be, we're aiming I'm aiming for a cool, not direct sunlight or dark environment with some airflow and decent humidity. We're looking for above freezing up to about 45, maybe 50 degrees is really ideal Fahrenheit. Um, 60 to 80% humidity pretty across the board for most cures will do really well. And then yeah, a little bit of airflow. You don't want it to be super stagnant because again, overgrowth of maybe undesirable molds So a little bit of indirect airflow is great. And. Light, having a really dark environment is going to be way more important for cures that have external fat to preserve that fat quality. This is really lean, so a little bit of indirect sunlight isn't going to be as much of a problem, but still when I'm picking out a curing location, I try to pick somewhere that is as dark as possible because it does just help preserve the quality long-term of meats, cheeses, canned goods, whatever is stored in there. So anyway, this is going to be probably four or more weeks before this is ready to be eaten. Traditionally, it loses about 50% of its weight. It's a very, very dry cure. We could also cut into it earlier. That's really personal preference. It needs to lose a minimum of 30% weight though for safe uncooked eating. So wait patiently until it loses at least 30% of its weight, which we took at the beginning of the video when we were adding the salt. Up to 50% weight loss before we cut into it. So I'll go hang this up now. I'll check on it. And when it's ready, I'll be back. Quick little pause from our amazing wonderful adventures to say thank you to this video's sponsor, which is Azure Standard. Azure Standard is a company that I have used and loved my entire life. They have an incredible selection of all kinds of canned goods, dried goods, frozen food, fresh produce. Oh my gosh, they have everything these days, I swear. And they have an incredible selection of more than just their own products. They also partner with farmers all across the US and beyond to bring quality, organic, affordable organic foods to their customers. It is kind of like a co-op, but it cuts out that middleman. So the prices are typically a bit better and you have this kind of independent food network. It's super fun. It's something that I really love. I grew up on Azure, so it has a special place in my heart. If you're unfamiliar with them, definitely suggest checking them out. I'll put a link in the description. And if you are new to Azure and you end up wanting to make an order, use the code PATIENTS15 for a little extra savings. All right, back to the meat curing. Okay it's been about two weeks since we started this project and in that time my weather has warmed up significantly so I've moved this from my curing room into a curing refrigerator situation and the humidity in there is a lot better. We're hovering at around 45 degrees Fahrenheit and about 70 to 80 percent humidity so pretty spot-on ideal conditions which is marvelous. I just want to unwrap this, take a look, make sure everything's going according to plan. We'll truss it back up and pop it back in the fridge for a few more weeks. That's looking really nice. We have a little bit of white mold starting, which is actually perfect. That is a real struggle for me in my really low humidity environment to actually get this desirable white mold. So that is wonderful to see. It is maybe just the teeny tiniest bit tacky. To the touch, but it's pretty dry on the surface and it's got, you know, some spots are getting darker and drier. Some spots are still quite pink, but this is a really fabulous little midpoint check-in. I'm happy with how it looks. It smells really nice as well. So all I'm going to do is tie it back up to help keep that tight texture. And then we'll just check back in on it periodically I'm going to wait periodically for the next few weeks to see when it is ready to eat. There we go, all finished, back into the fridge. All right, you guys, I have a confession. It has been eight, almost nine months now since I started this project, and I have excuses, which I will give to you, but this ended up being just a little bit different than how I would have liked to end this video, but that's okay, we're gonna make it work. I have photos and... You know, life happens. Things aren't always perfect and cinematic and filmed the way we'd like them to be. So I had started this project way back in March and I knew I wanted to go ahead and film this and share it with you guys. This recipe is going in my home charcuterie making book that I've been working on that should be released in spring, summer, 2027. So keep your eyeballs out for that. I knew I wanted to share this recipe. In a video with you guys, as well as work on just making sure I refined it perfectly for that recipe book, but in the filming and putting things on the hard drive and, you know, life happens. I had multiple projects going at once and I had an organizational snafu. So some of the footage from the first steps got completely misplaced, and I couldn't find it for a long time. And that really kind of just derailed and demotivated me to finish working on this video. I did take a lot of pictures of the subsequent steps, but I didn't really film. The last couple of steps, which I wish I would have, but I'm going to share right here with you guys pictures of what it looked like when it came out of the fridge. It had gorgeous mold covering. It was amazing. One of the best mold covers that I've been able to produce because like I'm always saying, we have really, really, really dry air here. So that's a challenge for me. So yeah, it came out gorgeous, beautiful mold covering. I ate a lot of it over the summer and it was fabulous. The flavor is spot on. I'm really happy with the way that I've tweaked the seasonings for this recipe. I do have some of it left over here though. I've put it in a vacuum sealed bag and tossed it in the back of the fridge. And this is a cool example maybe of, you know, seeing a cure that actually is older. Because a lot of times when I'm showing you guys my finished products, I'm showing you them as soon as they possibly could be eaten, not Eight months later. So happy accident. Perhaps I washed a lot of the mold off of this when it came out of the fridge because that's just personally my preference when I go to eat them. I like to wash a lot of that surface mold off. Oh, that's not bad at all. It's very firm. It's pretty dry, but it's definitely still sliceable. This held up really well. We've got a great pink color all throughout. It's pretty darn supple. Which, you know, the vacuum sealing and refrigerating usually really does work very good to just halt things right where they are if you're wanting to do kind of longer-term storage and you don't have a really good cellar or, you know, curing chamber kind of space that has the right humidity and right temperature to keep things in good shape longer. Sometimes it feels a little bit like cheating because we're all about the really traditional methods and doing things without refrigeration, but whatever works, works. And sometimes I want to keep things preserved a little bit longer in this kind of eating condition because I am not in a survival situation right now. I want my gourmet charcuterie. I don't just want shelf-stable food, but I know how to make it shelf-stable and I know that I could leave this out at room temperature and it would be fine and I could still eat it. It just wouldn't be as lovely. So you have those options and you can make it work for you in whatever situation you're currently in. This really is hands down one of my all time favorite cures. I hope you guys give it a try. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. If you have any thoughts, comments, questions at all, I'd love to hear from you. Please let me know below. I love to get to hear from you guys and chit chat a little bit. Um, also if you did enjoy this video, please take two seconds, give it a thumbs up, maybe share it with a friend who would also enjoy it. Those things mean so much and they really help to get the video out there into the algorithm and help me keep making videos like this. So thank you guys again, and I will see you all in the next video. If you enjoyed this and you want more fun meat preservation content, check out this playlist. It is. Full of videos that I think you will also really enjoy. And if food preservation in general is your thing, check out this one. We've got canning, all sorts of delicious recipes, and I think you'll really enjoy that one.